Various types of consumer refund promotions are run by manufacturers nationwide to encourage the purchase of products. In particular, such promotions are used to develop brand loyalty by requiring multiple purchases of the same product by one person. One type of promotion is a print promotion in which a refund offer and form are provided in a newspaper or magazine. In another type of promotion, the refund offer and form are attached to the product's package or inserted therein. Still another type of refund promotion is a Point-of-Sale promotion in which a pad of refund forms is provided in the store preferably adjacent to the product which is the subject of the promotion. Each of these types of promotions typically requires proof that actual purchases of the product have been made in order to obtain the refund. Further, the promotions are typically limited to one refund per person or household.
In order to provide the required proof of purchase necessary for the refund, the consumer must exert some effort, such as by peeling or soaking off labels. Often the effort results in a torn or partially destroyed label. Because of this, most manufacturers are willing to take only a portion of a label as proof of purchase. Further, in promotions involving canned products, the consumer is often asked to submit a number, such as the batch number, marked on the can as proof of purchase. These numbers, however, cannot easily be checked, so that almost any number is often accepted as proof of purchase. Because manufacturers are lenient on the proof of purchase requirements, consumer refund promotions are open to fraud. One of the worst abuses occurs when a would-be cheater goes to a store or stores and steals the entire pad of refund forms used in a Point-of-Sale promotion. This act not only facilitates fraudulent refund requests but also denies honest consumers the opportunity to use the refund request forms.
Known systems used to catch fraudulent refund requests have focused on the name of the person to whom the refund is to be made and the address listed on the refund form to which the refund is to be mailed. One such system is commonly known as a "dupe-checking" system which requires a hard or identical match of characters in the names and addresses of persons requesting refunds for a single promotion. More particularly, this type of system checks a mail list comprised of the names and addresses of each person requesting a refund for one promotion over a given period of time to determine whether there are duplicate listings. Duplicate listings are detected when the system determines that the characters in certain positions in two or more listings match. For example, one system may require that the characters in the first, third, sixth and eighth positions of the names of two listings match identically and that the characters in the first, second, fourth and seventh positions of the addresses of the two listings match identically for the listings to be identified as duplicates. The refund requests associated with each listing identified as a duplicate usually are then denied. These systems typically base refund rejections on only one set of character positions with a minimal number of positions contained therein. This is because of the heavy and expensive data processing involved in matching the requisite characters in each listing with the characters in all of the other listings. Further, to ensure that honest refund requests are not denied, the minimal number of positions in the character position set employed in known "dupe-checking" systems is often quite large. It has been found, however, that the greater the number of positions in the character position set, the easier it is to avoid detection by such a system. Computers have even been used by cheaters in the past to generate multiple mail listings with slight variations therein to avoid detection by known "dupe-checking" systems, wherein the variations are such that a postman is still able to deliver the refunds to the cheaters.